5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer F tier for first-turn info

BYWAY

BYWAY is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 78.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BYWAY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbaɪweɪ/

Noun

A road or track not following a main route; a secondary or minor road or path.

Noun

A road that is not frequently travelled.

Alternative forms: by-way, byeway

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How BYWAY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BYWAY as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 61.4% of games, misses completely in 38.6%, and leaves about 504 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,352 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.94 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

B___Y B in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position B__A_ B in the 1st position and A in the 4th position _Y__Y Y in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in BYWAY.

First-turn measures

All four describe BYWAY used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

3.10 Entropy (bits)
504 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
78.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 2% of evaluated openers
2.85 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BYWAY performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.94 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#14,352 Rank among openers
Opening with BYWAY left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.94 average. It ranks #14,352 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
22
3 guesses
573
4 guesses
1,314
5 guesses
417
6 guesses
24
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
A

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
61%
Green tile
29%
All gray
39%

Feedback distribution

BYWAY can come back 43 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

917 answers
518 answers
192 answers
121 answers
99 answers
94 answers
89 answers
43 answers
40 answers
40 answers
35 answers
20 answers
18 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for BYWAY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

B3Y4W4A1Y4
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Try next

TOISE CRATE SILER SOREL SLART SIREN

Strategy after playing BYWAY

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BYWAY.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BYWAY:

39% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
22% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SILER

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

38.6% →
TOISE 6.09 bits
21.8% →
CRATE 5.40 bits
8.1% →
SILER 4.55 bits
5.1% →
SOREL 4.76 bits
4.2% →
SLART 4.22 bits
4.0% →
SIREN 5.40 bits
3.7% →
TUILE 5.03 bits
1.8% →
WRATE 4.36 bits
1.7% →
ROUET 4.82 bits
1.7% →
SACRE 4.45 bits

Research on BYWAY

Game-tree analysis and word research for BYWAY, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with BYWAY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.96 guesses and ranks #14,521 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.11 guesses at best and is rank #7,192 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.94, at or below the proven-optimal 3.96, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BYWAY.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BYWAY is a kind of road.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BYWAY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).